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Remote work’s toll on cities
- Shorel 4y agoSo, zoning laws and greed have negative consequences and someone is writing an article pretending remote work is something bad. Got it, the writers have an agenda.
- DevX101 4y agoRemote work has the potential to make neighborhoods more dynamic. With more people at home, there's more demand for nearby coffee shops, entertainment, food options. I prefer the decentralized neighborhood approach to the hub and spoke model where you commute to a big city from the boring suburbs.
- yieldcrv 4y agoI would love more concentrated neighborhoods like I’ve seen in many places across Europe many other places across Europe dont have this or most people arent conveniently located but my point is that this doesn't seem to be an option at all in the US, unless you are in a nice development within one or two cities. not an option in the suburbs anywhere to my knowledge.
- landemva 4y agoI would be surprised to find this in suburbs, though Boulder might fit. Some wfh people have easily found it in resort mountain towns in USA, which have similarities to European resort mountain towns (outdoor activities, walkable, size constrained by geography).
- pjlegato 4y agoThat's correct. US zoning laws have banned the construction of dense urban neighborhoods and required car-centric suburban neighborhood plans since about World War II. Mandatory density limits and setbacks and numbers of parking spaces and square feet per occupant and other zoning regulations make it illegal to build anything other than low density suburbs. Many people still want to live in a dense, walkable neighborhood, though; supply is just fixed at ~1940 levels forever. The few prewar walkable cities that still function such as New York and San Francisco are very expensive as a result. Housing that was built for and occupied by working class people for generations is now too pricey for all but the rich.
- parineum 4y ago> US zoning laws... That's an incredibly broad statement since most zoning is handled on the state, county or city level. There are plenty of places in the US where someone could build an equivalent SF or NYC and yet they don't. > The few prewar walkable cities that still function such as New York and San Francisco are very expensive as a result. You seem to be drawing a causal link here, walkable leads to desirable and expensive. Yet, as I mentioned before, not only is it possible to build walkable cities in many states, there are plenty of other walkable cities that aren't expensive or desirable. I suspect that SF and NYC being the both historic and a hub of two giant economic engines of the US, the tech and financial sectors respectively, has a lot more to do with the pricing of those areas than their walkability.
- yieldcrv 4y ago> I suspect that SF and NYC being the both historic and a hub of two giant economic engines of the US, the tech and financial sectors respectively, has a lot more to do with the pricing of those areas than their walkability. Demand - from various sectors over time, sure, but also geographic constraints Each are different enough to only talk about in isolation, but of the commonalities you can't dismiss how interrelated the density and walkability are. A byproduct of the geographic constraints with a constant need to fulfill the demand.
- davidw 4y agoMost US zoning is pretty similar. There are exceptions like Houston, but by and large, zoning codes aren't that different from place to place. A lot of the model codes were derived from similar sources, IIRC https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines https://islandpress.org/books/arbitrary-lines has some good, if brief history of all of it.
- jen20 4y ago> there are plenty of other walkable cities that aren't expensive or desirable. Can you name some of them?
- SoftTalker 4y ago
- escapedmoose 4y agoI managed to find a suburban area with restaurants, groceries, and shops within walking distance in the US and it is an amazing, life-changing thing. I am never ever ever ever ever leaving. US zoning laws need to change.
- sokoloff 4y agoUnder the existing framework of zoning, you were able to find a place that well met your preferences and you never ever*4 plan to leave. From that place of extreme contentment, you conclude that zoning laws in other places need to change (emphasis yours). Interesting.
- escapedmoose 4y agoYes, because this type of area is so rare. I’ve never lived in another place like it (in the US). But it was built in the 70s, before zoning in the region got fucked. It’s a walkable oasis in a desert of stroads and strip-malls.
- johnkpaul 4y agoWhere are you? This sounds like a magical place of unicorns and fairies. :-)
- selectodude 4y agoMost inner-ring streetcar suburbs of old major cities are like that. Nassau County in New York, the North Shore in Chicago, anything off the Green Line in Boston.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoIt took some digging, but essentially they work in a university town. University towns are basically the apex example "walkable" with good restaurants, good shopping, good services, etc etc etc. The happiest existence I had lifestyle wise was living in university. It is the closest socially acceptable communal living experience in modern capitalists. There were stories of colonists captured in Indian wars by tribes, "freed", and they ran away to go back to the tribal group rather than go back to colonial life. You know, Dances with Wolves but in real life. There was a slight uptick in communalism in the early internet, but the MBAs have stamped out that out hard. Honestly, for places like San Francisco where Silicon Valley essentially destroyed the communal aspect of the city, all of those tech bros moving away would be good in the long term. Of course it would also take a massive collapse in property values, and kind of like revolution, that's never a good thing.
- nemo44x 4y ago> but my point is that this doesn't seem to be an option at all in the US There's quite a bit of this on the East Coast as it tends to be older. Pre-war towns in particular. Some rather affluent places too with trains to the local major city, etc. It's nice to have large single family homes and yards and be able to walk to the butcher, coffee shop, bookstore, or restaurants and the train. However, in Europe you generally won't find large, single family homes in this type of setting. Mainly multi-family and very small by American standards. Especially the UK.
- yieldcrv 4y agoyou might have a point, there is a lot of identical suburban sprawl throughout the east coast but is also that older setting I would need some specific examples to look at for inspiration though, and see whats wrong with them > However, in Europe you generally won't find large, single family homes in this type of setting. Mainly multi-family and very small by American standards. Especially the UK. You're right, I want the rich person's classic large Parisian apartment facing the main thoroughfare, with alleys of winding shops and cafe's in the back.
- gamechangr 4y agoHouston has incredibly relaxed zoning rules https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/houston-doesnt-have-zoning-there-are-workarounds https://kinder.rice.edu/urbanedge/houston-doesnt-have-zoning...
- shoulderfake 4y agoThe big problem with that is that zoning laws in america compartmentalize everything and you don't have many places with intertwined shops/markets with residential areas.
- twiddling 4y agoThen you run into local zoning. I for one would love more mixed zoning in neighborhoods on city boundaries, but too many entrenched interests at the moment
- rqtwteye 4y agoZoning may change with more people working from home and wanting things closer.
- andybak 4y agoI live in the UK and local shops, restaurants are ubuiquitous. Is that really something that is actively legislated against in the US?
- ahoy 4y agoExtensively, yes. Having housing & non-housing in the same area is rare in much of the US.
- andybak 4y agoBut... What happens if you've had a beer and suddenly remember you need a pint of milk for the morning? To pick an entirely not uncommon example from my own life...
- ryukafalz 4y agoIn much of the country, you either have it delivered or you go without it. There's commonly no reasonable way to get to a store without a car. I'm just moving to the suburbs but I had to specifically go looking for one with shops in walking distance. It's far from the norm; I've lived in places before where the only way to a shop was along a major highway and it was too far to reasonably walk unless you had no choice.
- alexb_ 4y agoThen you wait until tomorrow so you can drive half an hour to the Wal Mart. Or get it delivered. There are also places like Dollar General and gas stations which sell essentials for incredibly inflated prices nearby that you could walk to (but can still be miles away)
- xnx 4y agoUrban planners and other entrenched interests are a huge obstacle to progress in the US.
- mistrial9 4y agohumorous way to say it, since architects and their cousins, urban planners, have had vast and creative ideas for decades, while local government, real estate sales and their colleagues, real estate lending have crushed their hopes with coffee each day. source: professional urban planning office in California
- thegginthesky 4y agoYeah, GP has no idea what they are talking about. I lived with urban planners and architects for 20 years, read books about zoning, about the effects of urbanization on aquifers and rivers, about the differences between cities that grew organically like São Paulo or Mexico City vs cities that were bulldozed to fit a central plan like NYC. Never ONCE in my life I had read contemporary literature or heard a urban planner defend suburbia, or advocate for single use zoning only, or even say neutral things about American Suburbs. A majority of Urban Planners and Architects across North America, South America and Europe (my sample) are very much against it as it's not sustainable, creates traffic and other myriad of problems.
- woodruffw 4y agoI agree with your comment, but: I don't think NYC was bulldozed to fit a central plan. The city's (really, just Manhattan's) street plan was developed in 1807 and finalized in 1811[1], at a time when most of the island was still wetlands and marsh. (That's not to praise the Commissioners' plan, per se, but only to observe that no dense city was bulldozed to enact it.) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811
- thegginthesky 4y ago
- analog31 4y agoThe pessimist in me expects more demand for food delivery services than for walkable shops.
- coldtea 4y ago[flagged]
- bottlepalm 4y agoYou mean the car-oriented suburbs?
- kcb 4y agoThey are related. The car-oriented cities that serve as only a destination for car-oriented suburbs. With huge highways cutting up neighborhoods that lead directly into a downtown that is mostly parking lots. See the example of Tulsa, Oklahoma that is fully encircled by massive freeways and half the surface is just parking lots.
- bart_spoon 4y agoYou say that as if they aren't two parts of a whole. American cities and suburbs aren't distinct entities, they are two essential organs to a single body. All of the things people hate about American cities are enabled by American suburbs and vice versa. The hope is that remote work will enable more self-contained neighborhoods and small cities to replace soul-less suburbs and unlivable cities. Suburbs will likely be the long-term winners and cities the long-term losers, but the status quo in America was unsustainable, so something was going to have to give.
- Terretta 4y agoIt wouldn't devastate them if people could live above or around (walkable distance even in bad weather) where they work. It would revitalize them. The automobile society notion of residential far from workplace is just bad.
- ggreer 4y agoExcept for remote positions, how does that work? Does everyone move when they change jobs in a city?
- chemerson 4y agoYou could. Lots of people do things like that. You could also live near public transportation that might change the definition of "near" for some workers. I personally have never gotten a new job in the same city as my last.
- mavelikara 4y ago> I personally have never gotten a new job in the same city as my last. If you don't mind me asking, how old are you?
- sokoloff 4y agoNot GP, but I'm 51, been working in tech since I was 21 and, though all my jobs have been within about 50 miles of each other, none has been in the same city as the previous either. The closest sequential pairing of jobs was 3.5 miles apart.
- mavelikara 4y agoDo you move when you take different jobs, as the ggreer had asked above in the thread?
- sokoloff 4y ago
- dukoid 4y agoSubmission to the automobile has already devastated America's Cities...
- wmeredith 4y agoThis was my first thought. It's already happened. It will happen again as long as technology continues to displace production from locale in new and interesting ways.
- shoulderfake 4y ago[dead]
- cosmotic 4y agoRemote work will change, not devastate, American cities. It's pretty silly to live a split life anyway. Homes empty half the day and offices empty half the day; not an efficient way to use space.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- robg 4y agoYes, more city housing is the answer.
- bm3719 4y agoMy long-term prediction: Rural areas and exurbs will up-class, housing the higher-paid remote workers. The remaining non-farming rural poor will be priced out of these properties and will have to live in cities, in ever smaller apartments and eventually pods. The nice services that often are only available in cities currently will distribute more evenly geographically, negating a lot of the benefits of city life. This will have some positive effects, like having the countryside and its adjoining natural environments better curated, along with the large underclass masses living more resource-efficiently. The main downside will be that cities will be even more of a concentration of crime and other social ills, combined with worse public infrastructure due to reduced city tax revenue.
- dcre 4y agoThere are still huge returns to concentrating nice in-person things besides work in one place. Nobody is attending zoos, museums, or restaurants remotely.
- bm3719 4y agoIf transportation accessibility has recently peaked and will invert, with fuel and vehicle prices continuing along current trends, the lower classes become increasingly less mobile. The better off can drive their $100k SUV to fine dining and museums, which may be as close as the nearby town/city center. They might accept that trade-off in exchange for space and separation from urban blight.
- dcre 4y agoDriving an hour sucks no matter how nice your car is.
- throwawayoaky 4y agoall of these things have already been happening for a long time. no jobs == priced out
- tayo42 4y agothis has already happened a few times. then the cities get cheap, people move in, gentrification happens, poor people move out of the cities and repeat
- danielrpa 4y agoCities exist to serve people's needs. The 2 existing models are a relic of a low technology past: suburbia with long car commutes to downtown, and dense cities built around facilitating mass daily movement to the office through subway/public transportation. Instead, we need self-sufficient neighborhoods catering to different lifestyles and needs (some higher density and walkable, others still car-centric but encouraging shorter car rides) with limited need for long car rides or large investments in mass public transportation.
- kkfx 4y agoThe modern (now past) city model was about economy of scale: competing business in a small area means innovation, lower prices and specialization. Since such model do not exists substantially anymore cities have almost no purposes anymore. Suburbs where people live but do not have services also suffer. As a result the classic Riviera model where people live spread, but also find local spread small services survive and flourish. At that point who want to be in cities or suburbs? I fail to see ANY purposes to "convert offices to residential buildings".
- Swizec 4y ago> The 2 existing models are a relic of a low technology past: suburbia with long car commutes to downtown, and dense cities built around facilitating mass daily movement to the office through subway/public transportation I’ve been traveling Europe this month and visited several towns and cities both large and small. From tiny villages of a few hundred to 4,000,000+ people monsters. One thing that struck me as vastly different than how USA does things was the mixed zoning. Every city, no matter the size, feels alive. People live there. They don’t sleep in one area then go live in another. Everything happens organically near where the people are and the city/town/neighborhood/village never feels empty. > Instead, we need self-sufficient neighborhoods catering to different lifestyles and needs This is exactly what Europe feels like. A high street is never far, even when you’re in a sleepy residential neighborhood. At the very least there’s a small grocery store and bar on the corner.
- nemo44x 4y ago
- atomicnumber3 4y agoSome cities, perhaps. I live in a large (for the Midwest) city in the heartland and previously, being a software engineer around here topped out at ~150k if you had 25 years of experience. (This was literally quoted to me by our most “illustrious” local company, which is just a big government/bigco contracting place). I got very lucky in finding a highly unusual job paying >>> median wage (but still very light compared to if I moved to the Bay Area). Then the pandemic happened and now in my most recent job search (just completed, I got laid off in November alongside all the other people) pretty much every place offered remote without even asking and I had my pick of pretty much any company I wanted despite my house being literally in a (feed)corn field. So pretty pumped about some of these very profitable companies finally directing some (prodigious) payroll into my locale. Both selfishly and because I hope it helps inject outside cash locally where it otherwise wouldn’t ever go.
- jimkleiber 4y agoI'm both excited for you and worried that over the medium to long term, companies will adjust the pay down to match people's locales and such salaries will be lower over time from more competition. But as I said, excited for you as it currently stands :-)
- xen2xen1 4y agoThe real concern is that companies that are 100% remote will pick Romaina and not Iowa.
- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
- em500 4y agoWhy is that the real concern? Are Romanians (or Indians for that matter) somehow less deserving of higher pay than Iowans?
- 4y ago
- koheripbal 4y ago> cities must let developers convert office buildings into housing This is an Activist piece - not an Analysis piece. You cannot trust facts reported in an article that's advocating change. It cherry picks a number of facts in order to further the arguments.
- deltarholamda 4y ago> convert office buildings into housing Can't be done. Office buildings of significant size are not engineered for 24/7 human occupation. The sewer will be inadequate. The water will be inadequate. Retrofitting this would be spectacularly expensive, if it's even possible, as mechanical and plumbing chases are sized for the original design requirements and are difficult (if not impossible) to alter. It may be possible to do if residents were willing to use shared bathrooms, but they will not be. HVAC is not sized for 24/7 habitation either. Neither are electrical requirements. Stoves produce a lot of unaccounted for BTUs. They require larger electrical service. The electrical service has to be metered individually, which requires quite a lot of space. Also, when some natural disaster hits and the city loses power? You can't go home. Your home is 50 floors up. Nobody is walking that. The elevators are sized according to different rules than residency, so there are not enough of them, and they won't all be on a generator anyway.
- kkfx 4y agoEven ignoring the effort needed and it's cost: who want to reside in former office buildings if now downtown areas start to be depopulated from local workers and so services built for them?
- cozzyd 4y agoPlenty of people live in service-devoid suburbs. Services follow density of people.
- kkfx 4y agoOk, good. So what's the purpose of converting former office buildings in residential one? Workers who left them surely do not came back in them to reside, they left and choose new homes more apt to the WFH purposes, something not easy to find in a dense city. Where you have plenty of space to develop renewables in a dense city? Where the home garage to recharge your car? Where the place to get larger and larger package due to the flourish of on-line retail? Where the place for future flying cars/drone delivery etc? If middle-class people start to de-urbanize cities would be let full of desperate with much job offers to find work.
- Nursie 4y agoThere was a lot of worry about this with London during the pandemic, to the extent that the politicians seemed to be putting the interests of Pret a Manger (a sandwich chain) ahead of health measures. In the end it seemed likely that commercial landlords were a driver behind the politicians - if people no longer come to the city, who will rent my extremely expensive office space? British workers were made to feel like they were letting the country down, not coming in to the city, not spending money in city-centre shops, personally responsible for bankrupting business owners. Meanwhile my local sandwich bar and my local coffee shop were getting a bunch more trade. As were my local tradespeople, as I used what I saved on train travel to pay for work on the house. The effort to drag people back to workplaces was massively short-sighted in a country where politics and earnings are massively london-centric, where public transport is often straining to meet demand for commuters, and commuting by car jams roads and pumps out tons of unnecessary CO2. The hollowing out of big city centres should be considered a victory. Spread the wealth, cut unnecessary travel. And give commuting time back to families.
- rychco 4y agoGood, American cities aren't designed for human beings to actually live in. Hopefully this will cause major zoning reform & allow us to have dense, healthy, mixed-use cities.
- yodsanklai 4y agoMany people want to live in cities, including remote workers. They like being in a lively place. If anything, they leave big cities because rents are incredibly high.
- nemo44x 4y agoOr because they no longer like being in a lively place. It gets old and the quality of life is very low for the prices you pay because space is limited and there's enough people that are willing to pay anything to be in a lively place.
- asynchronous 4y agoOr they leave because they realize raising a family in a big city is orders of magnitude harder when remote work is an option.
- wesleywt 4y agoNah. It will become living spaces rather than office spaces. Especially for people who love the density of city living.
- akmarinov 4y agoAnother headline: Remote work to invigorate America’s smaller communities
- wesleywt 4y agoOr.. Remote work will change how we use cities.
- marstall 4y agoyes! In my state, there are dozens of small former industrial towns, often in beautiful natural settings, and/or on excellent transport arteries. They have space convertible to offices aplenty, revitalizable downtowns, cheap housing. I myself just made the move from the bustling capital city to a wonderful city of 17,000. I bought a large Victorian house for half of what my tiny city house was worth. I can walk to the library, movie theatre, restaurants, cafes. Nature is all around. There is an Amtrak Station. I could go on!
- newaccount2021 4y ago[dead]
- netman21 4y agoThe first time I heard this prediction was in 1994 when the city of Atlanta told workers to stay at home and work remotely over the internet to relieve congestion during the Olympics. Still waiting.
- kkfx 4y agoMh, allow me a question; let's say almost all offices would be abandoned and converted to residential buildings: who will reside there? Modern cities have economy of scale as main reason to exists. Most western word is evolved toward tertiary sector, most cities have experienced such trend more than the rest of the country. Cities still have some social purposes of course, being many means meet more people to select as friends, partner, have some services that are unlikely in the countryside etc but the main raison d'être was economy of scale. Without offices who need much of restaurants, health-related services, shopping malls etc? Here (EU) it's a not-that-recent trend that large malls, supermarket etc disappear or suffer and get split in more smaller instances spread in the territory BUT even if we do so WHO will reside in cities? Who want to live in an apartment instead of a home to WFH anyway, also counting the fact that many services will closed in cities due to lack of office workers?
- avalys 4y agoThese conversations are kind of like the airplane on the treadmill problem, where there are (approximately) two orthogonal sets of assumptions/preferences that lead to obvious but incompatible conclusions, and people end up yelling at each other over the conclusions without realizing the difference is just the underlying assumptions. Personally - I don't want to live in a city, or a town, or even a neighborhood. I don't mind seeing my neighbors but I don't want to hear them and I don't really want to interact with them. I'm perfectly happy driving 30 minutes or 45 minutes into town to run errands. I don't think that living out in the suburbs (or further) is "boring" because I don't like crowds and I'm not going to do anything that people in cities do for "fun" anyway. I'm living in a suburb now because I need to be close to work - and for my career involving hardware, that's unlikely to ever change. But if I could truly work 100% remote and I knew this would last me 10 years - I'd move somewhere further away in a heartbeat. If you think the world is made up mostly of people like me - you think remote work is going to devastate cities because who in their right mind would want to live there if not for work? If you think the world is made up mostly of people who want to live in cities in the first place - you think remote work will make cities better because a lot of disadvantages of city living are due to the need to accommodate a daily commute.
- courgette 4y agoI don't find suburbs boring. I find them soul-less. I grew up in rural France. Small village have shops, bars, services like post-office, hair-dresser and whatnot. It's not a dichotomy between things and absence of things. Suburbs would be fine in my own personal book if they were offering basic services and a sense of comunauty.( not in warehouse operated by large chain, but by people living there and earning a livehood out of it ) Totally get your point about being left alone, but I still want the place I live and raise my kids to be a network of humans sharing a sense of belonging. Not private lots next to each other.
- prepend 4y agoI suppose it depends on your suburb. Mine is 40 minutes outside of a top10 US metro area and has shops, bars, hair dressers and whatnot. Perhaps they are soul-less, but I think it’s quite beautiful with trees and trails and safety.
- shmerl 4y agoI don't see how that's a bad thing for cities where housing prices were sky high already.
- a3w 4y agoOn youtube, Notjustbikes states that mixed commercial/residential areas solve most transportation problems. Living in such an area, I absolutely concur.
- ricksunny 4y agopoor-man's market research: Would you (not your belief about others) be interested in co-working / co-living locales, in different countries (think Costa Rica, Tenerife, Zanzibar) with excellent maintained QoS connectivity, and (higher tier offering) where your right to work (local work visa) for your home-country employer / clients was looked after by the company hosting the network of sites? Goal: to liberate you to maintain your employ but hopping from locale to locale on a monthly or even weekly basis, with diverse life experiences to go with it. (cue HNers posting links of offerings that already exist but I promise from experience don't really offer at any ubiquity or scale) Important caveat: assume your home country's tax regulations have no contest with your working physically from outside its borders.
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoMe personally, no. Nomadic lifestyles prevent one from pursuing the kind of hobbies I would like to pursue (exotic pets and plants).
- ricksunny 4y agoThat makes sense - cool hobbies! =)
- PuppyTailWags 4y agoThanks! If a counterpoint would be helpful, I know someone around my age where a nomadic lifestyle would be perfect for because his hobby is traveling.
- ricksunny 4y agoIndeed, when I think of all the resumes & CVs I've come across whose personal interests line at the end says "Hobbies: traveling", I'm led to wonder why more people don't seem to allow themselves the creativity to integrate their work alongside their hobby of preference. Those such that I have met in passing in far-flung locales had taken grest pains to structure their work lives $ careers around the location-independent capability. I just thought more should have that opportunity of they could be facilitated to.
- dougmwne 4y agoBoo hoo. US cities are abysmal. Chronic underfunding of public transit and bad zoning policies that make it illegal to build dense means that we have some of the most unlivable and exclusive cities in the developed world. People are speaking with their actions. No one wants to deal with commuting downtown anymore. The expense, the time, the stress, just to further line the pockets of a small number of already incredibly rich rent seekers. Forget it, I am done and 100 more submarine articles will not get me back.
- autodev1 4y agoI think you hit the nail on the head with "rich rent seekers" -- Who else owns the downtowns of most big cities? Wealthy people, whose interests are served by keeping the pre-pandemic status quo of "Rent our offices. Pay our parking meters & public parking lots" No thanks. I'll take my remote job and live an hour outside of a city, to enjoy silence, wildlife, bonfires, and saving my hard-earned income in nature. Large scale rent seeking behavior is not positive for economies. Just ask the Saudis.
- rsj_hn 4y agoBingo. I look at these issues as a war between location and transportation. Those who monopolize location are the landlords. Their value comes from location. Transportation and communication makes location less valuable. It allows people to escape from under the thumb of landlords and get their own little plot of land so that they don't need to pay rent to anyone else. Imagine a world in which you can snap your fingers and instantly be transported anywhere. What would be the value of living close to your job? Or in a specific location? There would be no premium at all. All improvements to transportation, whether it becomes cheaper, or faster, or more comfortable, is a small punch at landlords. The same for any increase or improvement in communication. The internet, VPN, portable computers -- these are all little punches at those who sell location. Moreover while location is not produced, transportation and communication are produced goods. It does not matter whether you are talking about planes, cars, buses, trains, motorcycles, phones, cell towers, they are all made in factories by workers, whereas location is not. So tilting the scales in favor of communication and transportation takes the value that was captured by landlords, and shifts it towards productive industry. It's really a win-win.
- talideon 4y agoThen cities need to become places where people live again. That'll be easier to do with fewer silly restrictions on what qualifies as valid as a residential area, but also can't be used as an excuse for developers to create tiny box apartments.
- wellthisisgreat 4y agoToll? That's a wild title
- shams93 4y agoCities take a huge toll on the environment. in Los Angeles the week we had basically total lockdown we had the best air quality ever here.
- BirdieNZ 4y agoWouldn't this be primarily due to lack of car travel, rather than the city generally? As I understand it, urban dwellings and populations are per-capita more environmentally efficient, because density enables economies of scale.
- anarticle 4y agoCompanies did RTO wrong imo, the correct incentive was bonus pay for in person. If people are going to be ruthless about money, then go for it. Prices for how much that is worth might stabilize and save companies from themselves. US cities are built around commuter models that don't work well when people don't have to come in. Cities are very upset tax receipts are lower and are increasing taxes to shore up budgets. Not a good sign.
- norcon4 4y agoMaybe I'm biased, but I think cheering on the toll of remote work on cities is being sanguine. Cities have existed for a long time for reasons beyond proximity to work. Their decline will represent a decline in wider society. We centralize people and resources to give everyone better access to resources and economize on infrastructure. This pattern is as old as civilization itself. Bully for you if you can make off with the loot to the hills. As cliche as it sounds, we live in a society. Of course there will be winners and losers. But to me, the picture of wealthy, isolated, and spread out exurbs hoarding the wealth while cities languish in poverty is an incredibly bleak picture of the future. My hot take is that remote work is unnatural and has only taken off because of how laborious commuting and unaffordable housing have become in this country. Like others have said, many remote workers will still choose cities because of what they offer, and they could be much better places to live if we re-invested in them as such.
- tharne 4y ago> My hot take is that remote work is unnatural and has only taken off because of how laborious commuting and unaffordable housing have become in this country. Prior to the industrial revolution, most people worked in the same place that they lived. Farmers farmed the land adjacent to their house, shop owners lived above their shops, etc. Working in an office is not natural; working in or adjacent to one's home has been the norm throughout human history.
- woodruffw 4y agoI largely agree, minus the "unnatural" part: remote work can co-exist with urban development, and does in many places. The US is somewhat unique in the extent to which it's externalized the costs of non-urban (primarily suburban) living; there's no particular reason (other than difficult politics) why we can't price those externalities in and have both strong cities and remote work for those who want.
- fundad 4y agoThere isn’t evidence that urban resi real estate is coming down at all. If it sinks below 2008 levels, I’ll worry.
- spritefs 4y agoI personally wouldn't have a problem living in a city like SF if crime and homeless were less common But since this is a literal nightmare in SF, being less "car dependent" or appeasing these whining activists is the least of my concern. I could give a shit less about "car dependency" if I have to worry about my own personal safety on a regular basis. Expecting people to put their own personal safety on the line to reduce "car dependency" is asinine. If city advocates want people to move to their cities, they should get their shit in check first before even bothering to ask
- fundad 4y agoMost people in SF have cars, most streets are lined with garage doors. There are many without cars but the city is designed for cars. If you’re ok with car dependency then the suburbs are more comfortable. If shopping and hooking-up aren’t as important than safety you are winning.
- spritefs 4y ago> Most people in SF have cars, most streets are lined with garage doors. Ok. But what about cars getting broken into? Isn't that incredibly common? If I hypothetically lived in SF, I definitely wouldn't bring a car just bc I don't want my catalytic converter getting stolen or the windows getting broken
- fundad 4y agoWho parks on the street? The car is for driving to Tahoe. They ride Uber within the city.
- xrd 4y agoI was stuck in the Portland airport during the snowstorm. I had several illuminating conversations with people in the five hours I waited to reschedule my flight there at the airport. For context, my family recently relocated to a medium sized Florida town (~100k) from a Portland suburb. It was really interesting to hear the 20 and 30 somethings in line with me talk about Portland. They seemed to prefer it to Florida (where one grew up) and Portland, Maine (where the other grew up). They loved access to snowboarding (1.5 hours away from downtown Portland) and the restaurant and music scene. I half assumed they would be intending to flee Portland, but their mindset was not the same as mine is (saturated with bad news from Twitter and shitty local news stations). My news feed is all about the crime in Portland. These two people clearly weren't bothered by this to the extent I was (with small kids, etc). I think for many young people, living around other young people is still very, very important. I miss that part of my old life. It seems very stale in central Florida, to be honest. It's a small sample, but if cities could convert their downtowns into affordable homes (option to buy, not rent) I bet there would be a resurgence of young people establishing long term ties. If you don't have kids, you can avoid the homeless people (Portland recently voted to evict them from downtown anyway) on your way to multiple dates and drinking establishments. It (revitalized downtown) happened in Detroit, right, when they were at the bottom. Why not in all the other cities? Crime is, even now, no where near the levels it was in the 80s when I grew up in Portland never felt uncomfortable at all. Social media is amplifying a point of view for certain people, IMHO.
- iudqnolq 4y agoI live in a high-crime area. I hear gunshots every now and then. In two years there's been one shooting on my block. I treat others with respect and mind my own business. My neighbors reciprocate, and don't bother me. For various reasons it was convenient for me to go for regularly long walks late at night, and I never ran into any issues with that. There was one homeless guy who was grumpy I woke him up, so I learned to aim my headlamp better. In my experience people who end up seriously hurt by criminals tend to be criminals themselves. It's pretty easy to stay out of all that.
- xrd 4y ago
- lamontcg 4y ago"Remote work exposes bankruptcy of current unlivable cities"
- lost_tourist 4y agoIt's good to note the changes that can happen but I don't care if downtown caves in because I'm not there and work remote in a nice quite small home an hour outside of it.
- amai 4y agoRemote work will devastate the cities but safe the planet.